Speaker 1I'm Katie Page CEO of Harvey Norman. Since 2018, Harvey Norman has been a key partner in the Australian's investigative podcast, such as Sick to Death, Bronwyn, Shandy Story, The Teachers Pet and The Night Driver. Harvey Norman are proud sponsors of the Australian's podcast investigations and their award-winning journalism.
Speaker 2Today on the front, bags of cash, dodgy hotel key cards, gangsters, free Rolexes, the stunning crime wave, inside Australian casinos. Search the front to listen now.
Speaker 3Listeners are advised that the Night Driver podcast contains course language and adult themes. The Night Driver podcast is brought to you by the Australian newspaper and digital site.
Speaker 4The family of Missing Bath as a woman, Janine Vaughn, has made an emotional plea for information into her whereabouts. Sometimes obvious threads or clues can simply fall
Speaker 3through the cracks in a large police investigation into a baffling, unsolved murder. And in a podcast investigation, such as this 19 years after Janine Vaughn's disappearance. Since the release of episode 9, my friend the retired judge Peter Murphy and I have thought about these threads a lot. To our knowledge, they weren't teased out or developed then or by us until now. One in particular is featured in a December 2001 clip from a Bathurst TV news broadcast.
Speaker 5It's been a harrowing week for Janine's family and close friends. Adding to the worries, the fact that two people in home, some distance apart, heard a woman's screams coming from a bushland car park, not far from the city's popular motor racing circuit on Mount Panorama. "You've got my daughter. Bring her back home to us. We miss her so much. We want to home. We want her home so bad."
Speaker 3If it sounded familiar, it's because this clip was featured in episode 2 of the Night Driver. In that episode, you also heard and excerpt from police investigation files, which were part of the bundle of materials sent to the state coroner Mary Jerem in 2009. In among those files, there's a brief description of the searches mounted in the days after Janine's
Speaker 6disappearance. The search extended to the lower grounds of the Charles Sturt University. The search concentrated in an area where a female was heard screaming on the evening of Sunday 9 December. "But
Speaker 3who heard the woman's screams? How unusual was a commotion like that in relatively isolated bushland near the university? The police files did not say. And that's about all we knew. Until Bathurst Local, Luke Fitzgerald, who has been listening to the podcast, told me something he heard years ago in a chat with a senior cop while working at his house one day.
Speaker 7"He was a pretty high-up cop. He lives on the bottom of the mount. And he said he used the one that heard the screams. Me, he rang the coppers and said, 'The screams need you. Come up. No lights, no sirens.' It's
Speaker 3taken a few weeks longer than intended to produce this episode, the 10th in the Night Driver series. My right eye needed urgent surgery for a detach retina, which happens suddenly without warning. It's been a slow mend. The delay has probably worked in our favor. It's afforded a bit more time to find more people and talk to them and to think about some of these threads. Some of the conversations I've been having are on the record. Others spoke to me in strict confidence. Important revelations from many of these conversations will be part of this episode. We'll look more deeply at Janine's last hours. And at a blazing rower she had with a once close friend at the ox, just before she left to go to the dirty tavern, the Metro opposite McCatty Park. It's another possible thread. There will be ongoing investigations after this, the 10th episode. The evidence and the alleged conduct of some men who have aroused suspicions for years will be examined more closely. I don't know now where we'll get to because everything is still fluid. However, this will not be the last episode in the Night Driver series.
Speaker 8And we're living with your family at Mount Panorama when Janine Vaughn disappeared in December 2001.
Speaker 3I'm talking to retired police inspector John Haines. In 2001 he was a senior police constable in Bathurst. As a cop, John had a reputation for being measured, calm and professional. He was not prone to hyperbole or exaggeration. Since he retired from the force in 2010, John and his wife have stayed in the town. And John is the former cop who spoke to Luke Fitzgerald years ago about Janine's case, about a woman's awful piercing screams. John and his wife still live on the Mount, home of the famed motor racing circuit overlooking Charles Sturt University. Since his podcast series started, John has been driven with doubts over what was done and not done by police in 2001. He also reproaches himself over this. He was not called to give evidence at the inquest or in the earlier police integrity commission inquiry. We believe that what he's describing now could be very relevant. A significant thread which has fallen through the cracks.
Speaker 9It was Sunday the 9th of December. We had a police Christmas party on the Sunday and we arrived home with the family later in the evening, so it was sort of dusk. And it was a very quiet night. Still night would have been like 839 with daylight saving. It was some distance away, but it was clearly audible, the screaming, and you've been on for a little while. You want to say that enough time for me would think I really need to call the station and get somebody to trigger that.
Speaker 8What was it about the screaming that concerned you?
Speaker 9One other that turned blood-curdling scream is they need a round of it, but it certainly was a blood-curdling scream. It was horrifying to be caught on this. There's something I've never heard before. That's what concerned me the most is that the nature of the scream itself, it wasn't a scream, somebody party, or having a bit of fun, or it was as if somebody was being hurt, which really alarmed me, and it was a female scream. And look, it tickled on the sun toilet. It was quite concerning, it's hurrying the station and asked that they could send a car down to come and trigger that. It was a few tense sort of moments waiting for the police to ride, but they did get on to it rather quickly.
Speaker 3John was acutely aware of Janine's disappearance two and a half days earlier. The screams floated across Bushland and Horthandon Creek, several hundred metres away from John's house on an Atheaca property. There were very few people living in the area then. It was the opposite of Bathurst-Caburbia. Not the kind of landscape people associate with the surrounds of a university. John believed that police patrol car should come to the mount quietly, stealthily, with lights off and sirens off, so that he and the approaching officers would not alert whoever was doing the woman harm. They needed the screams to continue for just a little longer to have a better chance of finding and rescuing her. When you rang them to come, did you ask them
Speaker 8to come in any particular
Speaker 3way?
Speaker 9I did. So not to come with under lights or sirens because whatever was happening, they would clearly hear the sirens, but unfortunately they were coming down from the street, which is panorama revenue, leading up to the mount and they had their lights and sirens on and as soon as those sirens were audible, the screaming stopped.
Speaker 8So what happened? Why did they do the opposite of what you requested?
Speaker 9That I couldn't tell you heavily. I'm afraid. I couldn't believe that they actually did that. It happens and it was a bit annoyed. I think well the fact that as soon as I could hear those sirens in the distance, obviously the person would have heard it as well and that's when it stops. You know, something's ready to control. Yeah, there was nothing after that.
Speaker 8Who do you believe you heard screaming that night?
Speaker 9As soon as I heard the screams, and it was Jeanne Veron, which of course, very many of them were.
Speaker 8Have you changed your mind or do you still believe it was probably Jeanne Veron?
Speaker 9It's something you don't hear every day. That kind of scream is something that one of them never heard try to that and I haven't heard since. I think we all came to this conclusion that it was Jeanne Veron. I mean, it's just something so unusual to hear. You know, the timer and the thinking, it sounds like somebody's being stabbed or you know, something else horrifying happened to them because because that is the only way I can describe that screen that it was somebody who was being severely injured, raped, murdered, stabbed. That's the things that came to my mind. It wasn't as though somebody was having a party and you could hear other noise or music or any other voices or sounds. It was just this horrifying blood curdling screaming. It went on for a couple of minutes. Initially, it was very strong. Sometimes it would stop but then start again. The fact that it went on for that period of time, just let me tell the conclusion that it suddenly somebody was being, you know, seriously injured by somebody else. It was terrible. It was truly terrible hearing that scream. Where was it? If it did, if it was her, where did she go? Where was she taken? The only real way that somebody could have been removed from that area is in a vehicle and that would have been through the university. And then you've got like the creepy area and then it's just sort of like a land.
Speaker 3John recalled just one police patrol car responded that night. He can't be sure whether it did a thorough patrol of the university precinct. There was no roadblock set up at the exit point. Any perpetrator would have been able to drive off without arousing the slightest suspicion. But in the following days, state emergency service volunteers and police did a line search in a section of the bushland. The line search did not include police dogs with the scent of Janine Vaughn in their nostrils. But there was another fundamental shortcoming with the line search. John recalls that it was on the mount side of the creek. John is very confident that the woman's screams came from the other side, the university side. John told me he has regretted and feels in part responsible for the fact the line search was not more thorough and focused. And that it didn't carefully scour the creek from the other side. There are some other facts about the location and the timing which have weighed on John these past 19 years. There was almost nobody around the university on the night of Sunday, December 9, 2001. Students, lecturers and administrative staff had left on mass because the study year was over. Only a few people would have still been around the university. A perpetrator who knew the layout of the uni precinct and adjacent bushland could have come and gone knowing there was nobody around. And he would have been invisible along the banks of the creek with its dense curtain of bushland and undergrowth. The only clues to anything wicked possibly going down that night were the screams heard by John and his wife and young family. And by one other person who was in a uni dormitory that night. John, is it possible that if a bush grave had been dug for example that night and Janine put in it? It would have gone undetected in the subsequent searches.
Speaker 9Quite possibly. I mean, this was a line search done by maybe 2025, just for memory people. And we're talking about going across land that's accessible even today. It's still covered in heavy dense sort of scrub. But the search for my recollection didn't really go in that creek area. There's some bushes pushed aside and that kind of thing. But you know, it's something that even if that area was actually subject to a further search years later. I don't know, you know, it's not beyond the realms of possibly that the body could have been concealed somewhere. Or alternatively, they had quite a few hours, 12 or more hours to remove a body from that area anyway.
Speaker 3Because as I said, there was no police cordon prior to the arrival of searches.
Speaker 9I don't know how much emphasis was placed upon those screams as being, you know, perhaps relating to Janine. The unit should have been perhaps more thoroughly searched, more place involved. There's a lot more that perhaps could have been done. I'm worth our research. Maybe having other places been brought in it at the time. At that stage, you know, Janine had been missing for almost three days. The investigation into her disappearance wasn't really wrapped up until the following week.
Speaker 3After we spoke, John called again while walking along Hawthorne and Creek, where the screams appeared to have come from. It was the first time he'd gone there in many years.
Speaker 10Just took a few little short videos of where we were living and thought I heard the screams from. And then I think back at the search that we did, it clearly didn't really take in that creek area. Maybe I could tell you what I mean.
Speaker 3I watched as John filmed the dense foliage along the creek on the university side, where John suspect someone, and possibly Janine, was being badly hurt that night. The creek that's never been searched.
Speaker 11And there's a big driveway into the university called Research Station Drive. And its nickname was Rape Station Drive. You never walked on that night by yourself because it was alongside the golf course of the university. Yeah, terrifying, absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 8Do you think that women would have been right after they were walking alone?
Speaker 3Hundred percent. Megan Gregg is a former country girl from a family farm, four hours west of Bathurst. She's living near the beach in Sydney these days with her partner and their young child. But in 2001, Megan was a student at Child Sturt University. Megan was at the Oxford Friends. The night Janine went there after finishing work at Ed Harry's.
Speaker 11And this is one thing I wondered if you'd heard about. There was a girl called Erin who also worked at Ed Harry's and they had a fight about it that night as well.
Speaker 3I'm going to deal with this argument later in this episode. It's another thread. It too fell between the cracks. Megan spoke to me about a spate of attempted and actual sexual assaults at the university around this time.
Speaker 11They had a man come and train us like how to get out of date rape situations.
Speaker 3Megan's memory is good. The Western Advocate newspaper in Bathurst reported on the event in February 2001. Here's an extract from that article.
Speaker 12The female lectures analyzed date rape and outlined a strategy for women to get out of dangerous situations. Child Sturt University students representative council women's officer Jane Stinson said the course was made compulsory because sexual assault was a problem both on and off campus. She said she was a bit apprehensive at first because she didn't think a man would be able to identify with female victims and problems.
Speaker 13When you rang, I instantly remembered Janine Born's name and all these years later I still do think of her.
Speaker 3Jane Stinson was the student leader quoted in 2001 about the threat to female students at the university and the need for special briefings. She's gone on to politics. Jane is an elected member of the South Australian Parliament.
Speaker 13I see her face so vividly in my head when I think about her. We all thought that there would be an answer to this mystery by now. We thought she would have been found by now. It's really heartbreaking actually to think about her and what might have happened to her but also her family as well, not knowing.
Speaker 3Jane recalled the predatory behaviour of men around young women at Bathurst and particularly around students of the university.
Speaker 13There was a lot of promotion on campus about the fact that this happened and that women should be particularly careful of their safety and should walk alone in Bathurst day or night when the race was on, which, you know, these days you just wouldn't accept. Everything from really good comments to being grabbed on the bar more even on the breasts. It was the particularly unsafe time for women and pretty much everyone was really at least hold it out on the street. If not, grab your grove. If you're in a sort of bar made or a restaurant position, that was certainly my experience.
Speaker 3I remembered Janine's uncomplicated friendships and relationships with students at the uni. The easygoing socialising between town people like Janine and students like Jane who are only there for a few years, long enough to get a degree and move away.
Speaker 13Some of us had met her and knew her or knew she was friends with friends of ours. So it was pretty petrifying for that reason as well that someone that you had met or knew or that your friends knew could just disappear so suddenly. They're one minute and gone the next and no one seemed to know what happened. There must be someone out there who knows, like there must be someone. So if this is the thing that makes someone say, okay, it's been 20 years old now, you know, maybe it's time to go and tell someone what actually happened.
Speaker 3Having studied journalism in Bathurst, Jane then worked as a TV news reporter with a particular focus on crime.
Speaker 14The body of Emma Pawelsky was found dumped in Mount Crawford Forest nearly eight years ago. Her mother desperate for answers. spoke to Jane Stinson who joins us live from police headquarters with more Jane.
Speaker 15Back from talking to detectives today, you get the sense that they're actually quite close to a breakthrough on this one. They just need a bit of help in order to make an arrest. Thank you, Jane.
Speaker 3Jane Stinson reporting live. Emma Pawelskie's murder from 2005 also remains unsolved.
Speaker 13Well, after Janine went missing, I certainly felt it. I remember feeling that I needed to be a lot more careful in that there was someone out there who might be trying to get it young women and that we had to be really, really careful and probably take better care of ourselves. She was so like any of us and any of us young women could have been in the same position as that. No one likes walking in the rain on a cold night when you've had a few too many beers and you just want to go home and go to sleep. And if someone that you kind of know, or maybe you know quite well, obviously will live time. I can completely imagine getting in the car and you know trying to get a comfortable live time rather than having to walk or get a taxi. What she was doing was no different to what the rest of us were getting up to on a big night out. And she didn't seem to do anything
Speaker 3particularly remarkable. And she went missing. Since late 2017 when I started pursuing Chris Dawson for the 1982 murder of his wife, Lynn Harvey Norman has been a loyal backer. It began with the teacher's pet and Harvey Norman and its CEO Katie Pages support has continued for over eight years. I'm proud to have had their backing on all of mine and the Australians investigative podcasts, The Night Driver, Shandy's Story, Shandy's Legacy, The Teacher's Trial, The Teacher's Accuser, Bronwyn and most recently, The Sick The Death Podcast. For more information on this podcast, go to theAustralian.com.au.
Speaker 2Today on the front, bags of cash, dodgy hotel key cards, gangsters, free Rolexes, the stunning crime wave inside Australian casinos.
Speaker 3This has been a particularly challenging part of Janine's case to investigate and write.
Speaker 8But you know that all these things for some people make you a suspect.
Speaker 4That is pretty like crazy. For some
Speaker 3people, the inferences which might flow from it will possibly arouse awkward questions about someone we have not previously mentioned in The Night Driver.
Speaker 4Well, that's the thing I never wanted to keep rowing. I don't know, it was just like every time she saw me, you know, she just got angry.
Speaker 3Aaron Brady insists that any such suspicion would be completely unfounded. And it's part of the reason why I've gone back and forth in my own mind about this aspect of the case for weeks leading up to this the 10th episode. Questioning whether it is fair and reasonable to put these facts out there, in a faithful telling of an unvarnished story around Janine's disappearance, with all relevant details, some of which might even help solve the case. Or whether it's deeply unfair to Aaron Brady, a young woman who has stayed under the public radar while carrying painful regret over her former friend Janine for the past 19 years. A woman who was carefree, 20, and a student at Charleston University when she shared Janine's house at Rocket Street until a couple of months before her disappearance. A woman who worked for Janine in the Ed Harry's menswear store, who partied and went out regularly with Janine. They were so close, they were likened by some people to sisters, until a serious and sudden falling out which led to Janine, terminating Aaron's employment at Ed Harry's and asking Aaron to move out of the house in Rocket Street. And then a string of difficult encounters when they were out in public, culminating in fierce arguments, including one at the Oxford Tavern on the night of December 6, 2001. How has before Janine got into that mysterious red car on Keppel Street?
Speaker 4I just don't ever want to talk about it again, like I just, I just wish I'd never happened.
Speaker 8See Aaron, my dilemma is this, I know about the fights, the timing, the police interest, and you all that stuff, right?
Speaker 4I just can't believe that's the last time I saw her and we said no since then, sorry to that, if I had to just be like, you know, a stupid fight about anything, like boys or something, I don't care, but it's like all to do with that. You don't think we need to fight, we're so much the last time you're ever going to see them. People have fights all the time. I'm sorry. People
Speaker 8will understand that. But what I can't do is just kind of airbrush your existence. I've had to go back and talk to so many people and it would be just completely unprofessional and unethical to not talk to the one person with whom Janine lived and with whom she was at the arcs that night.
Speaker 3The first hint I saw in the police file of anyone being in conflict with Janine apart from the unknown stalker was in statements from her friend Jordan Morris to police. These statements were made in the days after Jordan saw Janine for the last time, getting into the red car about 10 to 4 in the morning after they had left the Metro Tavern. I've talked to Jordan off the record and he wants nothing more than resolution in this case. He just can't bring himself to talk about it in the podcast. In his statements from December 2001, Jordan described having driven his then-girlfriend Winita Murphy to the ox. Jordan parked his car and walked in through the back of the beer garden to the bar of the ox to order drinks.
Speaker 16I saw Janine walked over to Winita and me from the dance floor. Janine wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long-tight clinging hug. She had a look or a leaf on her face and walked back towards the dance floor. These are Jordan's words from his statements. It's not his voice. She told me she was depressed about being single still and that she was having money problems. She then went on to tell me about problems she was having with Aaron Brady. Janine told us she and Aaron Brady had been arguing in the toilets earlier in the night. I saw that Janine was starting to cry. Janine said to me, "I've got something to tell you." She said, "Do you remember last Thursday when I went out with Winita?" "Well, when I went home without thinking, I walked straight into the bathroom and swallowed a heap of pills. I was holding on to her, comforting her, and she stopped talking and just stayed there in my arms, literally crying on my shoulder."
Speaker 3In her first statement to police, Winita described being out with Janine at the ox the week before her disappearance and seeing a row in shoe on the night of Thursday, 29 November. In that statement, Winita says that Janine was determined to have her say with Aaron about her actions. I'm quoting here from that statement where Winita says the fight continued from the ox down to the tavern when the two came across each other. Winita adds, "In all, it really was only words exchanged between the two." Winita has always tried to help me in this investigation, and shortly before this episode, I asked Winita about the row between Janine and Aaron. And what do you recall about that dispute they had?
Speaker 17I think it was just all related to what had happened through work and they'd been friends, and I believe they'd been living together.
Speaker 3What sort of rabbit it seemed to you?
Speaker 17From memory, I think it was pretty even. It was very emotional, I think, yeah, because it seemed like they'd had a pretty good friendship and then Janine felt portrayed by what had gone on. But I know Janine ended up not more upset because she felt hurt and betrayed.
Speaker 3The more I've delved into this aspect of the case, the more I've struggled with how to handle it. If a young man had shared Janine's house, worked with her at Ed Harry's, been forced to abruptly leave his part-time job and the rocket street address, and then argued with Janine in public, including on the night she vanished. It's unlikely that revealing such facts would be problematic, but it's also true that these events were not explored at all in the public hearings of the Inquest in 2009, and that strikes me as surprising as I think a male with these unique characteristics would have been tested in public hearings after a subpoena had been issued for him to give evidence under oath. But statistically, a male is overwhelmingly the likely perpetrator in cases such as this. People who were close to Janine and Erin have known about their arguments. They had become volatile, but it is as if there's been occurred and drawn across it to protect Aaron because of a view that she had nothing directly to do with Janine disappearing. Aaron has of course been interviewed for this episode and she has agreed to talk about and deal with events surrounding the ending of her friendship with Janine. I have agreed to not disclose the actual trigger for their falling out. It was just a stupid mistake Aaron made two decades ago and she's regretted it ever since. Jason Wyatt had worked at the park hotel and then at the OX. He and Janine had been close a few times. Jason knew about Janine and Aaron falling out with each other.
Speaker 18From mom and roommate, they were like best friends, they were like twins when they were everywhere, day everything
Speaker 8together, you're saying one out, you're saying the other.
Speaker 18As far as I know mate, Janine obviously had a lot of it more errors but no one in conflict
Speaker 8mate. You guys were obviously pretty fond of each other, I read that she was thinking maybe you guys could be in a relationship.
Speaker 18You know, it's not like you read about some stranger in the paper you know or it's someone else's point of view, it's that's personal mate, yeah and it wasn't just someone I knew or seeing the girl you know what I mean, it had a fair bit to do with her mate so yeah it does make it personal and she wanted to settle down, have kids, of course I'm sorry.
Speaker 3In late December 2001, Felicity Pennell signed her police statement in Bathurst. Before Felicity knew Janine, before she worked with her at Ed Harry's Felicity was friends with Erin. When Felicity knew she was going to leave the job in the shopping centre to be a trainee accountant, she suggested to Erin that she would be a good fit in the store.
Speaker 19Erin worked at the store for about two months before she moved into Janine's house. Erin's mother Lynn Brady paid Janine sixty dollars a week for Erin to live at the house. This money included food, electricity and board. I think that Janine was happy to have someone else around the house. I recall that she told me once that it was difficult living around the house by herself. Janine was very security conscious and whenever I visited her house, the door was locked and she would check to see who was there before opening the door. Erin remained working at Ed Harry's for the next 11 months.
Speaker 3These are Felicity's words from the police statement she gave. It's not her voice and I've given an undertaking to Erin to not disclose the actual event which gave rise to her and Janine no longer being friends.
Speaker 19Immediately after that happened, Janine told Erin that she was to leave the house and that her employment was terminated. Later, Janine spoke to me repeatedly about Erin and I noticed that she was worked up about what had happened. I've never seen Janine get so angry and I had to sit down and tell her not to worry so much about Erin. Sometimes Janine could be a bit dramatic about things that affected her and confront people with what she believed they had done wrong. This was the way it was with Erin.
Speaker 3I've talked to Felicity about some of this. She knew Janine and Erin well. She was on good terms with both of them. But Felicity watched their friendship unravel and then escalate into argument in public places with a sense of growing unease.
Speaker 20Janine was going out if we're not making a thing about it and looking to fight her and it's probably blowing off the rails a little bit at the time. It was a very, very violent reaction. Again, this is only rumour, but the night that everything happened, she was hiding in bushes ready to try and attack Erin and fight her. And the fact that it went on for as long as it did, you know, without it sort of calming
Speaker 3down. Felicity recalled things became more tense after Janine's brother Rodney Vaughan came to the bathest on a visit. Janine was angry when Rodney and Erin had a romantic fling.
Speaker 20He was trying to calm her down because she was so irate about Erin Brady.
Speaker 3I've talked to Rod about Erin and this and he's confirmed that Janine was unhappy about
Speaker 21it. So that was definitely the race weekend. I reckon it was the week before or in that week she kicked her out. Janine took it very, very seriously. She felt very betrayed. I met Erin twice before that. We had a little new thing at home, I'd been with her a couple of times, on visits, nothing serious. She wasn't there. I was like, "Oh, that was a bit disappointing." So I think Janine was a bit pristine to me that she said, "Oh, Rodney, just come over and say Erin, I don't know." So I sort of shut me off and didn't answer about her ever again. Yeah, I didn't realize she'd have enough of the Janine or the Janine or the Janine or even say that night till I was reading nothing was Georgie's statement.
Speaker 4I think that she was just really angry with me.
Speaker 3I told Erin that one of her friends from that period, Felicity Penels, had said that Janine became quite unbalanced about her. So unbalanced that at the time Janine confided to Felicity that she believed she might even need to get some counseling for it.
Speaker 4Hey, she wasn't aware of that though. I mean, that's horrible though, isn't it?
Speaker 3Janine's relentlessly persistent sister, Kylie Spell, has spent many thousands of hours investigating this case over the years.
Speaker 22When Janine did go missing, a few people had said that they had seen them at the ox have an altercation, that they did have a bit of an argument, but apart from that, no, I haven't spoken to anyone in relation to that.
Speaker 3Still recently, Kylie had not talked to Erin about any of her contact with Janine before or after the falling out.
Speaker 22I suppose yeah, being a female, I may have just felt that I didn't want to bring it up for that reason.
Speaker 8Who else to your knowledge was Janine in conflict with at the time she disappeared?
Speaker 22I don't think anybody, you can imagine how Janine must have felt with all of what was going on. She lost the friend, she lost the flatmate, she lost to a work colleague that would have been quite distressing, I can only imagine how she felt at that time. She may have started her night in a happy girl-lucky mood and then she's had this upsetting argument with Erin. It was a snowball effect of her night.
Speaker 3I asked Janine's other close friend in Bathurst, Rebecca Howe, about the conflict with
Speaker 23Erin. Erin was a very attractive girl too, she was petite like Janine, she had long hair, she was fairly outgoing and friendly as well. They were pretty close. When she moved in with Janine, they used to go out a lot, they worked together and they had a lot of fun together and I think she did really miss that companionship that she had with Erin too because they really did get on well. They're quite similar personalities too. They're very flirtatious, they're very loud, fun and recall having really upset and devastated by it that she had trusted her and let her endure life and they were pretty taught. Janine sort of took Erin in and gave her a job and then let her into her house and they also shared a lot of common friends too.
Speaker 3Beck told me something else I didn't know. In the last weeks of her life, Janine received some abusive mail.
Speaker 23They weren't, I love you notes, there were more like, you know, nothing but an if and sluts and if you and all of these, these were obviously different to all the other infatuated
Speaker 4notes. So I said I saw her, we were at the pub and I saw her in the bathroom and we had a fight and we said like some nasty things to each other, I can't actually remember what they were but I just remember I just wanted to go after that so I went home with my friend and then I suppose she went to, to the tavern, sorry, okay sorry I'm getting my stuff to get off, is it really hard, I, I three year old back up again, I don't just talk about it with anyone because it's so hard.
Speaker 8So why were you with her at the aux?
Speaker 4I wasn't actually with her, I was with other friends and she was with other friends of hers but we're sorry, tell her in the toilet so that's what we had a fight. And that is exactly why I feel like so crappy about the entire fucking thing. I know that I really didn't want to be having the fight and I just wanted to go and she kind of just had me in the bathroom and she was just yelling at me but I can't remember what she was saying because I just wanted to go, I just wanted to get out of there and not be in this huge situation. I felt like she didn't want to let me live, she just wanted to keep yelling at me. I just wanted to move on, well would I yell back at her about something like that?
Speaker 3Alexi McKeith saw some of the fallout in the aux that fateful night. Alex he was that way. friends celebrating her 22nd birthday.
Speaker 24It was just like a perfect sort of storm of events that was going on that night. There was just so much happening, which obviously you've been uncovering over the these last few months. Did you see her crying? I think she was pretty emotional, a bit drunk, a bit a little bit messy. I was talking to her at the ox in the queue for the toilet and also on the dance floor. I think we had a bit of a dance together.
Speaker 3Alexi recalls Janine being distressed that night about something else too. Janine had split up with her boyfriend David and he was in Sydney that week, but his new girlfriend was at the ox.
Speaker 24It was like an emotional rollercoaster of all these, like everything that could ever happen in one night, happened on that night, to her. It's sort of yeah. And then she got into a rent car. Yeah. They drive us. Oh God, I don't know. I don't know. Is it a female? That's why I've always wondered.
Speaker 8What do you wonder?
Speaker 24I don't know, just I always sort of thought they were really looking in the wrong place.
Speaker 3The former criminal defence lawyer and judge Peter Murphy, who has been on this case with me almost from the start finds the whole air and angle, like so much else in Janine's disappearance frustrating, sad and perplexing. We read thousands of pages of evidence and we've definitely read these statements in which Aaron has mentioned, but it didn't make a powerful impression on us until very recently. I feel like I missed it.
Speaker 25I'm not sure that we actually missed it. I mean, Aaron has really flown under the radar. We know now that she was actually a person of interest, as far as the early investigating police were concerned, but she doesn't appear. It's very odd to me that that wasn't sketched into the inquest even by way of background to try and explain Janine's last movements. And it's as if she's just simply disappeared off the radar by the time the inquest comes around.
Speaker 3I just don't understand why there wasn't proper scrutiny of these circumstances during the inquest.
Speaker 25It seems odd they've been described as being like twin sisters. That's how close they were. They lived together at Janine's house. They went out together all the time and apparently from what everyone tells us they were incredibly close. Now the facts are that Aaron was one of the last people to see Janine alive. The facts are that a matter of some hours before Janine disappeared into the night, she and Aaron had had a massive stash at the ox.
Speaker 3And therefore, in your view, appropriate that we delve into it in this 10th episode.
Speaker 25Well, I think we have to, I mean, it seems to me that we'd be negligent if we didn't really. Look, I think it's important that we're not seen to be pointing the finger at somebody who we haven't pointed the finger at in earlier episodes. That's not really what we're talking about here. What we're talking about is an important part of the picture representing Janine's last hours. It's an important part of the picture because of the closeness of the two of them. The fact that they knew each other well and have fallen out spectacularly in the lead up to Janine's disappearance and had on any account had a major fight that night. So there's some questions to be answered. There's some issues to be explored.
Speaker 3At the height of the row, Aaron Brady told me she just wanted to escape.
Speaker 4Then I just remember I was just like, "I just need to go." I don't want to do this. I don't want to fight with you. I just want to go.
Speaker 8Oh, sorry. How would
Speaker 4you describe the
Speaker 8friendship before you fell
Speaker 4out? We're really close. Janine's such a nice person. Janine's kind of like a big sister. You wish to
Speaker 8sign with a friend? Yes, but I'm
Speaker 4sure she took me home. We're just set up out the front of my grandma's house. I've talked for a while. Then she left and I went to bed.
Speaker 8We've been rude, Janine.
Speaker 4No, I was upset. I was just upset. I don't want to be angry with her. I knew she was angry with me, but I don't want to fight. I don't live alone. I think I'm actually not a confrontational person. It's kind of hard for me to yell and scream and it's just not. I'm pretty bad at it. Like having people yell at me because I just don't yell back. I don't. It's just not me. Oh my god. I'm just sounding so.
Speaker 3I'm sorry. Matthew Adams was working at the Ox that night as part of the security team.
Speaker 26I asked Janine to move on and move to our side to go into the blue rub. She did. Pretty much as we asked. She was very happy. She wasn't rude. She wasn't aggressive. She was actually smiling and
Speaker 8making jokes. How often would you ask people to leave on a Thursday night, typically? There was about just 20 years ago.
Speaker 26It would be pretty crazy. There was no fact that there was an obligation overnight. What about your contact with police? What's happened there? Nothing. Never question. Never ask any questions. They've tracked everything from the moment you got in that car and in that car, but they haven't ruled back to what else happened or that night. And really, the question. I know there was certain people questioned. But most of them were drinking. We were sober. Now, it's like I'm supposed to know what I mean. We had many martyrs working on this car. Pretty nice when the car got on our end. But we stood on that egg out there. No, who still everything that went on. I found it very strange. My whole point of reach and it was not because I thought I had answers or it solved the case. I just felt that maybe the police should have been talking to us in most other parties and downing back tracking her movement a little bit more. And the two women ran missing off the streets of the town in a central west. In a small community. Was it somebody from out of town?
Speaker 4People have just a great little time. I just don't think that's the last time you let us say them.
Speaker 8Having secured with Janine on the night, she disappeared. Do you see that some people would look at you as a possible person of interest? I suppose. It
Speaker 4is really hard to do with that.
Speaker 8Because I think you also blame yourself for the falling out. And we don't have to go into the details of what that was about. But do you have blame yourself for that?
Speaker 4Yes. Yes. It was so. It was just awful because we were such good friends before that. And it is my fault that we feel that it's really hard breaking.
Speaker 8Do you have anyone in Janine's life who would have harmed her?
Speaker 4No. Anyone that I knew that knew Janine loved her because she was an amazing person. It's not so hard.
Speaker 8Do you know who had anything to do with Janine's disappearance?
Speaker 4No. I definitely don't.
Speaker 8And you had absolutely no knowledge of her's disappearance or you didn't get back to see her after around with her then. No. What would your friend who you were with have been to be in my place as well to support that?
Speaker 4Yes. Jerry and I both went in with the cold. I don't know how many times she was interviewed, but I know that she did definitely have an interview. In place of me all the time, that we weren't nice to each other and I never saw her again.
Speaker 8Was that the worst rare you'd had?
Speaker 3Yes. I suggested to Erin Brady a scenario in which someone airing you, male or female, someone who also knew Janine had driven the red car which picked Janine up at 10 to 4 in the morning. Not necessarily to harm Janine, but to have a word with her to tell her to back off and leave Erin alone, to tell Janine to stop arguing with Erin in public, let their past differences go. In this scenario, I suggested that something had gone wrong. Erin would not have even necessarily known about any of it.
Speaker 4I just don't think I know anyone that would do that.
Speaker 8Have you ever heard that suggestion before?
Speaker 4No, this is the first time I've ever heard that. Why would pick? Why would someone do that? It's not fair business.
Speaker 25Erin says she went home to a grandmother's house. She went home with a friend and she sat on the veranda of a grandmother's house, speaking to a friend.
Speaker 3Erin told me that she didn't drive, she didn't have a car at the time. One of the things I put to Erin was that someone who was close to Erin, someone who was concerned about the impact that all these rows were having on Erin, has tried to have a firm word with Janine at 10 to 4 in the morning. And it's gone bad and that Erin didn't necessarily even know about it. Maybe she had a contact or a guy who was interested in her, someone wanting to carry a bit of favour and that's escalated from there. I mean, it's just a hypothetical.
Speaker 25It's just one of the innumerable theories that have emerged over the time we've been doing this podcast, particularly on social media, that everyone seems to have speculated about all sorts of things.
Speaker 3In the days after the screams heard by John Haynes and his family, Trevor Gunter traipsed the surrounding ground around Mount Panorama. This was his job and also his area of expertise. Trevor was the local controller in charge of the state emergency service in Bathurst for a decade until 2008. He has vast experience in official searches. I raised with Trevor what John had already told me. He described what he recalled as a lion's search, which he now reproaches himself by me, because his recollection is that that lion's search by some police, some but mostly SES personnel, was not on the university
Speaker 8side of Houghton's and Creek, but the other side. Do you remember?
Speaker 27Yes, I was there for that. In terms of the kind of search they wanted and what they needed to look for, it was just poorly, poorly managed. We did find a couple of items like, I'm trying to remember what they were. They were like blankets or material or something like that. But, you know, those what we call lion searches are very inefficient. They look good to the public because you have all these people in a line at a certain spacing.
Speaker 3In a search, such as the one for Janine in 2001 with a missing and possibly murdered woman, police take charge and tell the SES where to look. Trevor said the homicide squad senior detective Paul Jacob was calling all the shots. Trevor also confirmed John Haynes' recollection about where much of the searching had occurred. John believes that the screams of a woman were coming from the university side of Houghton and Creek. Do you know why it was the opposite side that was searched?
Speaker 27My understanding at the time is that the screams that had been heard were coming from towards Mount Panorama.
Speaker 8It's baffling because John's recollection, and he's gone back recently, is
Speaker 3that the screams were coming from the other side, the university side of the Creek, and he regrets
Speaker 8that the search that he was involved in, he says focused mostly on, as you say, the southern side of the Creek.
Speaker 27I don't recall them specifying that it was one side of the Creek or the other. It was just over towards Mount Panorama.
Speaker 3Did you actually or other personnel who were searching get into the Creek itself and into the Scrum right around the Creek? Or was it mostly the paddocks and open bushlands?
Speaker 27As I recall, it was mostly the open bushland, but there would have been some people that explored some aspects or areas of the Creek. It could have been managed a lot better in terms of breaking up and using sort of mapping and breaking up the area into really designated zones that you could put teams of people into. It was just put people in the field working along across the field.
Speaker 8Do you recall why police dogs weren't involved in that Houghton and Creek area where the screams were coming from?
Speaker 27No, I don't recall there being any cadaver dogs or any police dogs at all. I have no knowledge of why they weren't used. At some parts of it are exceptionally scrubby with blackberries and other things that it's just too difficult to go through.
Speaker 8If the screaming woman had been Janine and her attacker had dragged her towards Houghton and Creek from the University side, and then the screams were coming from, and then her body had been left concealed
Speaker 3in the bush in the Creek. Would that have been something that came to the searches' attention because they
Speaker 8were going through that area?
Speaker 3Trevor doubted that the searches would have found her in that scenario. He remembered his own searching of the grounds of the University as well as deserted uni buildings.
Speaker 27There was a small dam just down from the University that we dragged. You're basically throwing in metal hooks and bars with hooks on to try and snag anything that might be in there.
Speaker 3Trevor told me that in terms of the allocation of personnel and time, the biggest search by far was at the top of Mount Panorama. And that's nowhere near where John heard the blood-girdling screams. Trevor told me that the search methods were shoddy and haphazard, and that the police in charge did not take advice from him.
Speaker 27So you need to have a structure in how a search is applied to effectively cover an area as large as possible as quickly as possible to maximize your probability of success, and that wasn't done.
Speaker 8And in your view was that unsatisfactory?
Speaker 27Yes. A large part of the area that we were searching was part of the camping ground, and it was virtually very low grass. And we were walking across an area like almost like a, not quite like an oval, but close enough to it in terms of that it was visible. And you could see for 50 meters that there was nothing there, but we still had to walk in a line that's like doing a line search across and over, looking for a body. To me, that's just dumb. We're having a whole lot of people working online across the relatively clear areas, kind of a dumb search.
Speaker 3From your knowledge of Hawthorne and Creek, do you believe that a body could have been concealed on the banks and bushland in those gnarly parts of the creek and remained considered?
Speaker 27It's actually quite gullied and very steeply gullied in parts. The most likely scenario would be someone to just hide a body in blackberries or some sort of undergrowth. If you just wanted to quickly hide something, that is a likely scenario. I mean, we're surmising 20 years later. And there's plenty of opportunity to do that from areas on the top of the creek because the blackberries and scrubbed in parts of the creek. Growing and filling up parts of the sides of the creek itself towards where the erosion is. So a body could easily be tipped off in some areas off the top of the bank of the creek into really scrubby stuff that would be then hard to find. I doubt there'd be anything there now in terms of the number of foxes and other animals. There'd be unlikely to be any remains.
Speaker 3Needle and a haystack, isn't it?
Speaker 27Oh, yeah. So look, the possibility that Genome was buried and remains hidden to this day is a strong possibility.
Speaker 3What about just left in the open, just sort of abandoned in amongst those blackberries?
Speaker 27That is a strong possibility. It's almost impossible to search in blackberries and that sort of really super scrubby terrain. You just can't get into it. You've got that ability to do that in those more what we call a random search. And they are statistically just as efficient and actually more efficient because you can cover a much larger area and you're not constrained by these artificial boundaries.
Speaker 3The former detective inspector John Tate spoke to me in an earlier episode about the work of strike force mountain before and after coronamary gerums in quest. John Tate expressed skepticism about the potential to find Genome remains now in bushland if they were not deeply buried or otherwise concealed.
Speaker 28We spoke to farmers about if Genome was here and the world and that sort of stuff. And as they said to us, a body or even a car could put out on their land at night time, 24 hours later it's gone. The pigs get to it. It's just terrible to say. I mean, I happen to happen that way, but it's what the farms are saying. The farmers there, they just when they're shaped or cat looked at it, and they lay them because I know that they're gone within 24 hours. And we're talking a long way out of that, and it's a little too far out. Yeah, the back of me and Pamara, and that sort of places.
Speaker 3Peter Murphy and I have driven over this area. But when we were there before the pandemic struck, we had no idea of the significance of these blood cases. of these blood-curdling screams described by John Haines. I spoke to John Hayne again this morning and he has been back again to that creek that wasn't properly searched at all. The creek that he believes the screens were coming from on the
Speaker 25university side. There were no meaningful searches undertaken in the area where John heard the screens. There were no real searches or indeed any searches undertaken of the undergrowth and the gullies and the thicker scrub where a body might have been hidden. Now I find that
Speaker 3remarkable. The screams that he heard and someone else heard and he's family heard, blood-curdling screams at that time should have become almost a significant piece of evidence as the sighting of her getting into a red car almost because he says as a train copper you'd never heard anything like those screams before, nor since and he believes and believe then that those screams were hers and yet they just seemed to fade away in terms of being a significant part of the case to the point where the search was haphazard.
Speaker 25Well look it's two and a half days later and the significance of that is entirely unknown. Was she abducted, held somewhere, then taken somewhere and killed two and a half days later. So there's an unknown two and a half days between when Jeanine disappears early in the morning and when John hears of these screams. But the reality is you have an experienced police officer who is incredibly troubled by what he hears even if it's not Jeanine. He's heard a woman with blood-curdling screams in the middle of the night in an area of bushland not far from you. We're up many other people have told us that women had to be very careful. So at the very least you'd think you'd search that area whether you thought that you were searching for Jeanine or not. So I find that quite
Speaker 3extraordinary. 19 years later is the search of that creek area in the undergrowth now probably futile?
Speaker 25Well the short answers we don't know do we? Given what John says about the screams it seems to me that another search wouldn't be out of the question. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 3Kylie has been busy since the end of the previous episode too. She's been searching more locations around Bathurst. Kylie has suspected for years that the official searches were haphazard. In episode five Jeanine Wheatley told of Wells at White Rock which were not searched by police after Dennis Briggs had claimed to have disposed of Jeanine's body there. Here's a reminder of some of what was said by Jeanine back then.
Speaker 29You know he just went on that he ended up breaking it back into the cow and he took a home he took her at White Rock went down all the way how he raped her he stabbed her he buried her and went back and put it down a well. I know for a fact the police have looked at White Rock but they didn't look on the right side of the river. I just found it's the star that he told me she's down a well and there just happens to be two on that property.
Speaker 3Since hearing this Kylie has been to White Rock to search the Wells which were apparently overlooked by police some friends from her hometown of Musclebrook took harnesses and ropes and when they reached the bottom they scraped some of the debris away for forensic analysis.
Speaker 30We know that the initial investigation has had its flaws so for us it's very much look these are things that's hovering around all the time that we're constantly thinking about if they're not going to go and do it then we need to do it for our own piece of mind if nothing comes up then nothing comes up but at the end of the day it's torment not knowing whether there is something there or not so for us it's kind of like a bucket list of things that needs to be done.
Speaker 3In her desperation there's also been a more recent dig by Kylie but this one had nothing to do with evidence or confession. Two young women who have been listening to the podcast went to see Kylie and they told her they were certain.
Speaker 30We will always make sure that we take in that information but for me this was the first time that I've physically got in my car the next morning and headed out at six o'clock in the morning and this is where she is you know that's how adamant she was so matter of fact this is what's happened this is how it happened this is where she is don't be silly looking anywhere else so we got out there and it was a little bit overwhelming they walked us through what had happened and how it happened and went into such detail and it was horrible there for a little while and they told me that the area where we had started to dig is where the the person had burnt her belongings we started digging and we got a fairway down and we started to to find like ash and lots of like charcoal and stuff that was underneath the ground so my heart obviously skipped a beat thinking oh my gosh these guys are real my hands were black and so and so it was emotional as well being out there and finding that straight away we kept digging and digging and digging they felt that there was a shoe there we didn't find anything we'd been out there for six hours we had missed it my hands were so sore most of us I didn't want to leave either because you know I felt stupid if it wasn't going to be something that you know they had pretty much said it's going to be that it was so deflating at the end of our time with these girls and you could tell that they were deflated as well they pretty much just sort of said you know that that this person had maybe come and taken that the stuff away and it's moved to another location.
Speaker 3Kylie had not mentioned to me the information from these young women all the dig they went on together until after it was done when I asked her about the credibility of the tip of about its evidentiary basis she told me the women were clairvoyance Kylie told me that this information had a spiritual basis. I mean I understand why you want to do this but I don't believe any of it. I know and a lot of people don't and yeah I did feel very silly for doing it. These so-called clairvoyance are deluded they make ridiculous claims but vulnerable people who are desperately clinging to the faintest hope get taken in. I should be clear that this is my view even after what has happened it isn't Kylie's view. She would follow any lead to the gates of hell to find her sister. In the next episode of the ninth driver a former Sydney police detective who specialises in discovering deceptive answers examines thousands of words and statements from persons of interest. The night driver is a podcast series investigated and written by me heavily Thomas with assistance from Peter Murphy. Music and audio production is by Blacksmith & Co with additional audio support from Chris Bosley. This podcast series is brought to you by the Australian newspaper and digital site. Visit theknightdriver.com.au for additional documentary material as well as credits for the full team behind this multi-part production. Anyone with information about the disappearance of Jeanine Vaude can contact me confidentially by email by going to theknightdriver.com.au. You can search for the night driver podcast official discussion group on Facebook and join in with the exchange of ideas and information. This podcast is made possible by subscribers to the Australian and our principal sponsor Harvey Norman. Harvey Norman has provided unwavering support for my investigative podcast since 2018. For more information on this podcast and on our entire investigative catalogue, go to theAustralian.com.au.
Speaker 2Today on the front bags of cash, dodgy hotel key cards, gangsters, free Rolexes, the stunning crime wave inside Australian casinos. Search the front till this end now.
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